


Seeing Red

by MissPippinator



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, Familiar Enemies, Graham and Ryan will appear at some point, Slow Burn, thasmin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23701378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissPippinator/pseuds/MissPippinator
Summary: The TARDIS identifies a rift in the fabric of reality, leading the Doctor and Yaz into a series of dangerous encounters. The unexpected reappearance of a familiar face has potentially serious consequences for the relationship between them both.Will the Doctor make the right decisions for herself, for Yaz and for the universe?
Relationships: The Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

If Yaz had hoped that Graham and Ryan deciding to remain on earth would gift her more quality time with the Doctor, she was very much mistaken. The first journey the TARDIS had taken them on after saying heartfelt goodbyes in Graham’s front room had resulted in an incident on a distant planet involving approximately 40 elderly and incontinent slug-like creatures. By the time Yaz had finally managed to shower long enough to get the slime out of her hair and feel clean once more, the Doctor had decided it was time to recalibrate some major systems underneath the console, discarding her coat, rolling up her sleeves and disappearing down a hatch in the floor. When Yaz walked back into the console room in a fresh set of unslimed clothes, she immediately tripped over the disconcerting array of cables strewn around the floor, almost dropping her phone and sloshing half the tea out of the mug she was carrying. The Doctor could be heard but not seen hitting something metallic with a series of loud clangs. Yaz sat on the steps to sip the surviving tea, in theory checking her phone, but really chuckling at the exclamations that were drifting up from the hole.

Like: “Oh that’s why the quantum particle exacerbator wasn’t connecting properly. Who plugged it in there?”

And: “Stop hanging on to that spindle valve, I need to replace the temporal coupling before you blow it out completely!”

And following a particularly impressive shower of sparks which erupted up from the hatch: “Well don’t blame ME for the energy overlay on that stream, I wasn’t the one who made a short cut from the main hosing!”

Yaz drained her mug when without warning, an alarm began to wail, causing her to choke on the tea. The console lit up with flashing red lights. And amber lights. And even some twinkly pink ones. A thud echoed from under the floor and the Doctor’s head popped up like a meerkat, hair in disarray, begoggled eyes.

“That’s a problem,” she said in typical understatement.

“That’s not reassuring to hear,” Yaz responded as the Doctor clambered up from the hole and engaged in a terse debate with the TARDIS console. 

“You were doing just fine without a sonic dampener before I plugged it into the resonating chamber,” she stated with firmness. “Why are you upset about it now?” A trill from the TARDIS prompted a scronch and a head shake.

“What? No! I don’t think so!” She gave a few dials firm twists and flicked a switch which caused a furious spark followed by a small plume of smoke.

“Come on, Old Girl, you don’t really need everything plugged back in to tell me, do you?” she almost pleaded into the air, but the TARDIS remained resolutely elusive about the details. Yaz approached, standing next to the Doctor and watching the Time Lord’s hands as she attempted to line up several small wheels.

“You can’t find out what the problem is?” Yaz asked in mild concern. After all this time, she trusted the Doctor and the TARDIS with her life, despite the interesting scrapes they not infrequently ended up in, but it didn’t stop her adrenaline from rising in situations like this. 

“The ‘what’ is not the issue, it’s the ‘where’. There seems to be a serious rift distortion somewhere that the TARDIS has homed in on.” Yaz recognised her ‘patient but annoyed with the TARDIS’ voice, combined with a somewhat frustrated expression.

“And that’s bad, right?” She followed the Doctor, who was moving around the console and operating things with the firmness of a parent whose child who was pushing the boundaries. 

“No. Not really. Not that bad. OK quite bad. When I say ‘quite bad’ I mean incredibly serious, threatening the balance of reality.” Another switch flicked, another spark and poof of smoke.

“But you can’t find out where?” 

“She is a bit cross about all the cables I unplugged and says that it’s my fault she can’t tell me where the rift is. But she’s locked on to its energy readings and is going to take us as close as we can safely get.” She looked over at Yaz, a familiar spark of excitement in her hazel eyes. 

“Hold on…”

Yaz just about had time to clutch onto the console before the Doctor yanked one of the levers and the everything lurched sideways. It was all she could do to maintain her desperate grip on whatever bits of the console she had grabbed, fervently hoping she wasn’t changing any settings or pressing things she shouldn’t. The Doctor, as was characteristic in moments like this, was meticulously making her way around each panel, working feverishly. 

At one point she needed to reach across Yaz, and the younger woman found a warm body pressed against her arms and hands and soft blonde hair in her face. Relinquishing her grip on the console to move out of the way would have meant certain injury from being flung around the violently heaving room, but she could feel the Doctor’s hearts beating against her arms and found her own heart racing in return, well aware that it was not merely a response to the stressful situation. She told herself that now was not the time for these sorts of thoughts to pop into her mind, and thankfully just seconds later the Doctor had moved on. Yaz instantly missed the warmth on her hands and arms, embarrassed to notice it had apparently travelled straight to her face. She was grateful the Doctor was too busy to see. 

Without Ryan and Graham in the equation, it had begun to dawn on Yaz that it would be increasingly difficult to ignore certain feelings she had been desperately trying to repress. Other people around meant other people to talk to, other things to think about, and Yaz worried that the first time there was any kind of lull leaving her and the Doctor standing still for a moment, she would go into a complete panic and die on the spot. Of course, this being travel with the Doctor, there had been no such lull, and nor did it seem there would be one forthcoming if the current state of action was anything to go by. 

Yaz drew a small amount of comfort from this as the TARDIS thundered to a halt and she finally felt safe enough to release her death grip on the console, thinking that her fingers might just have left imprints where they had been gripping. The Doctor was already heading to the door, coat over one arm, wiping her oily hands on a cloth which she discarded over her shoulder. 

“Come on, Yaz, let’s find out where we’ve ended up,” she called out, sounding far more enthusiastic than Yaz felt appropriate, having been summoned by an alarm to an unknown location which could potentially be dangerous. Which, let’s be honest, it probably was, given the Doctor’s track record, Yaz mused as she grabbed her leather jacket off the stair rail and followed her to the door. 

To be fair, the Doctor opened the door relatively gingerly and did not instantly stride out into the unknown. She sniffed a few times before deeming it safe enough for them to exit and stepped out, closely followed by Yaz. They found themselves in a large, grassy space, a few trees dotted around, a pathway meandering lazily to the right. 

“This looks very familiar,” Yaz commented, racking her brains. Had they been here before? The Doctor crouched and was picking individual blades of grass, chewing each one like they were expensive delicacies. The tendency to taste unusual things in order to ascertain certain details about a place or a thing was something Yaz had somehow gotten used to, and she was completely unsurprised by the actions. She was also really distracted by that nagging sense of familiarity, until the penny dropped right at the same time as the Doctor stood up. They looked at each other and spoke at the same time:

“It’s Sheffield!” 

“I used to play in this park when I were a child,” Yaz pondered, whilst the Doctor sucked on another blade of grass thoughtfully.

“Twenty first century, too. Maybe 2019 or 2020? Too sweet to be any later,” she added for completeness. 

“I’m home, then,” Yaz said, looking around and trying to get her bearings. 

“Yes. We could go to your place for tea!” the Doctor suggested, a bright smile lighting up her face at the thought.

Yaz looked at her pointedly. “But didn’t we come here because there is a problem?”

“Oh, yes. Forgot that bit. No tea for now, then, maybe later.” The Doctor activated her sonic and scanned in a wide circle then squinting at the readings. 

“It’s not very far that way,” she declared pointing towards a more heavily wooded area slightly uphill from where they had landed, and had set off at a jog before Yaz had even noticed. She had been trying to work out which direction home was in and wondering about the chances of seeing Graham and Ryan out for a stroll in the park. She turned and abruptly realised the Doctor was already halfway across the expanse of neatly trimmed grass and was disappearing off at a fair old lick. Yaz sprinted after her, well aware of the dangers of letting the alien out of her sight when she was focused on something.

By the time she caught up, they were near the edge of the trees and the Doctor suddenly stopped, Yaz barrelling into her back, unable to stop in time. 

“Sorry,” she puffed. “It’s just, Park Hill is not far over there,” she pointed. “And Graham and Ryan will be that way, too,” she added, before noticing the Doctor was looking in concern at the readings on the sonic, her face solemn, brows furrowed accentuating the line between them. She didn’t need to say anything for Yaz to realise things were not good.

“Doctor, I don’t like it when you go quiet,” she said apprehensively, but the Doctor merely put a finger to her lips and beckoned, setting off into the trees considerably more slowly and cautiously than she had been moving before. Yaz followed suit, stepping in line behind her as they moved gradually further into the tree cover. 

Now she was being quiet, Yaz realised there was a noise ahead of them – or rather, an absence of noise. It was as if there was something there absorbing all sound, which was disconcerting to say the least. The Doctor paused, alternating between scanning and examining the readings on her sonic. Yaz found herself peering over the Doctor’s shoulder at the silver instrument, though she had no idea what the readings meant, no matter how many times the Doctor had tried to explain it to her. 

They looked at each other in silence, the Doctor communicating with just a look that things were really rather serious all of a sudden, and Yaz hoped her eyes conveyed back a sense of understanding the importance of this information, rather than the unsettling sense of unease which was creeping up her back. 

The trees had become much denser at this point, with added low-lying shrubs covering a lot of the ground and making their progress more challenging. And whilst it was definitely daytime, beneath the trees it was becoming darker and darker, as if night was upon them, as if the rest of the world had been cut off. It felt like being in a cave, Yaz thought.

And then, cutting through the disturbing absence of sound, there was a thud, like something heavy had just hit the ground not far ahead of them, and when the Doctor pulled back the branches of the bush in front of them, two things were revealed. 

First was a… something in the air. When Yaz tried to look at it, she couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t actually see what it was. Her eyes kept rolling off it like water on feathers, and she was left with an after-impression of redness hovering in her vision. But there was something wrong in the air.

And in front of the wrongness was a figure – shorter than she was, squat and solid, blue-grey armour and a round, bald head with fury in its eyes. In its hands was, unmistakeably, a gun.


	2. Chapter 2

“What is it, Doctor?” Yaz breathed, not wanting to draw the attention of the creature to their whereabouts.

“A Sontaran,” was the hushed reply.

Yaz might have wanted to ask for more details about what this meant, but she was more than aware that this was not the moment for a lengthy explanation, plus the Doctor scuppered any opportunities for questioning or even retreat by suddenly stepping out into the open in front of the creature.

“Hi!” she announced cheerfully. “You seem to be lost. Can I help you get back to where you need to be?”

The creature sprang into a pose that was ready for action, and Yaz’s heart leapt into her mouth as it trained the gun directly on her. The Doctor did not seem bothered, however, and carried on regardless.

“Only, I don’t think you meant to be here, considering you’re all alone.”

“I am here for the glory of the Sontaran race,” the creature announced gruffly. 

“That’s lovely. Do you even know where here is?” She stood calmly with her hands on her hips, her face smiling benignly. 

“It does not matter. I will conquer all!”

“I’ll take that as a no, then. But the conquering thing – so 15th century. Why don’t you try a different approach? How about - work with me here - sitting down for a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits? I can highly recommend the biscuits on this planet, you won’t get better biscuits anywhere else in the universe…”

Yaz watched the Doctor step closer and closer to the Sontaran as she waffled away, clearly hoping that her usual tactic of distraction by chatter would prevent a quick and messy death at the wrong end of a gun. It had partial success. There was no messy death, but equally, the Sontaran was not distracted, as evidenced when it stepped forward and thrust the gun in the Doctor’s face, prompting her to stop advancing and put her hands up in reassurance.

“OK, you’re not the biscuit type, but you really don’t know what you’re missing out on.” She still seemed completely unbothered by the gun, though Yaz’s heart was in her mouth. 

“You will be quiet!” The Sontaran’s voice suggested it was losing patience.

“Really? Being quiet’s no fun. For example, I can’t say things like - LOOK OVER THERE!”

Yaz was about to discover that, whilst a fierce race of warriors, Sontarans were not especially renowned for their brain power, and the one standing in front of the Doctor dutifully turned to look behind it where the Doctor was pointing, giving her the chance to leg it into the bush where Yaz was still hiding, grab her arm and haul her bodily away through the woodland. 

Yaz staggered along trying not to trip on the uneven ground in her attempt to keep up with the Doctor and not be yanked over. It hadn’t taken long for a roar of anger to echo behind them followed by the crashing sound of the Sontaran giving chase.

“We can’t risk it following us anywhere with other people,” the Doctor panted as they stumbled onwards. “They would panic and it wouldn’t end well.”

Yaz wasn’t sure if she meant the people would panic or the Sontaran, but frankly she didn’t want to find out which. 

“We’re in a city, Doctor, there’s no way of avoiding people if we keep running” she puffed in response.

“Plan B is find somewhere we can trap him, then,” the Doctor said after a brief pause to think.

“There is a derelict block of flats on the edge of the park,” Yaz suggested as they approached the treeline. 

“Derelict flats it is. Lead the way, PC Khan,” replied the Doctor and they burst out of the trees and headed across the open grass. They could still hear their pursuer making a meal of its progress through the trees behind them. 

It was fortunate that there were few other people in the park at that point, the only ones they saw were far enough away that they wouldn’t have been able to see what was going on and would hopefully just think them young people doing whatever it was young people did. Lungs burning, Yaz saw the derelict flats come into view, knowing from comments made by Sonya about some of her more dubious friends that it was possible to get inside. 

They were maybe halfway across the open space when the crashing in the trees stopped, and a hurried glance Yaz risked backwards revealed the Sontaran now making worryingly rapid progress across the grass. It may have been smaller than her in height and not exactly athletic in physique, but it could certainly run quickly, and Yaz returned her focus to the tall building which they were approaching an awful lot more slowly than she would have liked. As she ran, she tried to recall the conversations with Sonya where she had berated her sister for hanging out with people who thought it a worthwhile pastime to go and smoke in the ruinous structure. Where was it Sonya had told her they got in? She seemed to remember Sonya speaking of a corner of the perimeter wall which had fallen down and led to a side door that could be prised open. The closer they got, the easier it was to see the broken area of wall which would allow access, and for once Yaz was relieved that no one had seen fit to secure it.

The thudding of heavy footsteps in pursuit were definitely getting closer, prompting the Doctor to practically vault over the brick rubble of the collapsed wall. Yaz took a slightly more cautious approach, not wanting to break her ankle by landing awkwardly, but she still managed to step onto a chunk of loose brickwork, causing her ankle to turn and sending her flying towards the ground. The Doctor jumped back and managed to grab her before she landed, Yaz clinging onto her coat, feeling warm, strong hands holding her arms as her feet struggled to gain purchase on the rough ground. She had enough presence of mind to feel frustrated that she was being held by the Doctor at a time when she really couldn’t appreciate it, staggering to her feet and smiling a breathless thanks. When their eyes met, Yaz could see the genuine concern in her friend’s face until an area of intact wall next to them exploded - the Sontaran was simply blasting itself a clear passage through. 

Yaz darted to the door which was adorned with a psychedelic array of graffiti and heaved at it as another bit of wall shattered. It was incredibly stiff, the hinges rusted and reluctant to give. The Doctor joined her and they wrenched together as the hinges screamed in protest, but as the Sontaran finally appeared through the new hole it had blasted in the wall, the gap in the door opened just enough for the Doctor and Yaz – but definitely not a Sontaran – to squeeze themselves through into the dark, fetid corridor beyond. 

They had made it halfway along before the Doctor realised the door had left a stripe of dirt emblazoned across the hip of her coat and she stopped in annoyance, swiping at it with her hands.

“Look at that! I hope it hasn’t stained,” she cried, horrified. 

Yaz couldn’t really believe the Doctor had stopped in the middle of being chased by an alien with a gun who seemed intent on shooting them. “Doctor, I don’t think this is the time to worry about laundry,” she urged.

“It’s OK, it will take the Sontaran a while to get that door open enough to fit through,” the Doctor said distractedly, still attempting to brush the stubborn marks away. As if on cue, a patch of plaster right next to her shattered explosively.

“It can still fit its gun through, though,” Yaz shouted in concern. “Quick, there’s stairs over there!” This time it was Yaz who grabbed the Doctor’s arm, pulling her round the corner and onto the stairs as a sudden flood of light into the corridor announced the Sontaran’s success in getting the door open. 

They made quick progress up to the first floor, which was in no better state of repair than the squalid downstairs, walls rotten with black mould, areas of exposed brickwork where the plaster had fallen off and was now littering the floor. Some of the doors had been smashed open, dirty light filtering through the filthy windows beyond. The floor itself was damp and strewn with debris, making progress in the semi-darkness hazardous. Yaz couldn’t help but feel that this had unnerving parallels with horror films and tried to block from her mind the images swimming there from movies she now wished she’d never watched. 

They had made it halfway down the corridor before another patch of wall exploded and they heard the Sontaran bellow at them.

“You will stop!”

With no obvious way to hide, just a straight corridor in front of them and the Sontaran behind, then froze and turned slowly around to face the alien standing menacingly in the gloom. 

“Get behind me,” the Doctor muttered, standing in front of her friend protectively. It never ceased to amaze Yaz how the Doctor constantly thought nothing of her own safety if it meant giving her companions a chance. Yaz hated her putting herself in danger for them, and tried to use her now somewhat obscured position to glance surreptitiously around in the hopes of spotting something that might give them an advantage. Crumbling walls, rotten floor, lumps of fallen brickwork, but nothing that would offer any kind of protection from a Sontaran gun.

Rotten floor.

Lumps of brickwork. 

An idea began to form. She was sure it was not a particularly good one, but it was an idea nonetheless. She needed the Doctor to keep the Sontaran preoccupied, which fortunately was the current strategy the she seemed to be employing in order to give herself more thinking time. She was chattering away to the Sontaran about biscuits again whilst a plan was forming in her mind. Well to be more accurate, there were about 43 plans forming in her mind, each one knitting together as every nanosecond passed, she just needed the time for one of them to get to a point where it could be put into action…

That point never arrived, because without warning, a large chunk of brickwork was launched from behind her towards the Sontaran, who was evidently just as surprised as she was. They all watched it arc gracefully through the air as if in slow motion, clearly not about to hit the creature, but land right at its feet. It let out a mocking roar of laughter as it landed, which turned to shock as the disintegrating floor gave way under the sudden impact. It fell through the splintered floorboards, disappearing from view.

The Doctor looked at Yaz, her mouth open in an O of surprise, quickly replaced by a smile of complete delight.

“Ten gold stars to Yaz! High five!” She cried, holding her hand up, which Yaz slapped joyfully. She hadn’t expected for a moment her idea would actually work, but it had AND the Doctor was impressed with her. This pleased her more than she cared to admit, those moments when the Doctor recognised her efforts bringing butterflies to her stomach and a warmth to her cheeks. 

They raced together to the newly formed hole in the floor to see the Sontaran hanging from a broken beam, a crack at one end steadily increasing, threatening to let the alien plummet to the floor below where it had already dropped its gun. They threw themselves to the floor to grab its arms and try to prevent it from falling. 

“Oh no you don’t, mate,” the Doctor grunted and she and Yaz hauled it bodily back up. It struck Yaz, as they heaved it to its feet, that details about what to do from this point onwards were sorely lacking from her plan, but fortunately the Doctor had this bit covered, hoiking open an adjacent door and shoving the Sontaran inside what turned out to be some kind of maintenance cupboard. Together with Yaz, she pushed the door closed against its attempts to resist, sliding shut the external locks. Yaz also found a length of broken wooden beam that she used to brace against the door and the opposite wall. It wasn’t perfect, but it would hopefully hold it at least temporarily. It was not happy about the situation and was currently screaming what were undoubtedly Sontaran obscenities at them which apparently the TARDIS was reluctant to translate. 

Leaning against the door, which was shuddering with the pounding coming from within, the Doctor tried to brush off the additional dirt her coat had acquired whilst lying on the floor with little success.

“That door’s not going to hold it forever,” she mused, “But I really want to take a better look at that anomaly in the woods. Come on.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay – life kind of took over!

The sun was low in the sky by the time they were back at the edge of the woods, the golden light of later afternoon illuminating the parkland which was now thankfully empty. The Doctor pulled out the sonic once more to locate the anomaly deep in the trees, although the change in light hadn’t affected the unsettling, claustrophobic gloom under the tree cover. 

As they approached the site, again Yaz was struck by how it seemed to suck sound out of the air: the rustling of the breeze in the trees, the distant birdsong, the background noise of the city pulled into an absence of noise that seemed to press her ears, as if it had a physical weight. And when they came upon the rift itself, it still pushed her eyes away, trying to stop her from seeing. The Doctor gave up on using her eyes, brandishing the sonic ahead of her and looking instead at its readings as she approached it. Yaz followed a step behind, adding a strange prickling on her skin to the list of weird sensory effects it seemed to be having on her. 

Once they got within about a metre of it, the Doctor stopped and reached behind her to find Yaz’s hand and pull her close. Much as Yaz wanted this contact to be for other reasons, it seemed the Doctor wanted to pass her the sonic, placing it into her hand and positioning her thumb in a particular way to keep it working as the Doctor let go. She met Yaz’s eyes and raised her eyebrows in question, to which Yaz nodded in reply – hoping the question was “Have you got this?” rather than anything more complicated. She held the sonic steady as the Doctor took another step closer to the shimmering nothingness and this time it began to crackle and flicker, and finally Yaz realised she could actually focus on something because it was actually opening, a gap in the air in front of them, zazzling and buzzing and squealing like feedback from a microphone. There was definitely a hole there – but a hole in what? There was nothing there, yet clearly there was an opening and through the opening – somewhere else.

Yaz gasped in shock – was this the boundary she had stepped through to get to Gallifrey? It couldn’t be. That was huge and coloured like bruises and totally unmistakable, whereas this was small and colourless and almost actively trying to stop them from seeing it until this point. The Doctor’s face was scrunched in focus as she reached out in front of her as if to touch or even reach through the gap. The sound increased as if it was static, and as her hand came closer, the gap seemed to enlarge. Yaz was fully expecting her to jump straight through, but instead she pulled back, and pulled Yaz back with her. 

“Doctor, what was that?” Yaz asked incredulously, handing the sonic back. The Doctor took it from her and studied the readings with a frown. 

“It seems to be some kind of rip in the universe, like when pages of a book get stuck together. If you pull them apart bits of text get stuck on the wrong pages, and little tears let you see through to other pages.”

“It’s like a tear in a book?” Yaz asked, thinking she could grasp this.

“No, nothing like that at all.”

“But you said…”

“I know. Basically, imagine a lot of bits of the universe getting stuck together and getting torn when they pull apart.” The Doctor was making tiny adjustments on her sonic, her face lined with worry.

“But you said it wasn’t like that…” Having thought at first she might actually understand something, Yaz could feel her comprehension running rapidly away from her.

“No, it’s nothing like that. But humans do like their analogies to hook their understanding on. I could say it’s like a custard cream with a hole in the filling that contains all other kinds of biscuits in the universe.”

“It’s like a biscuit containing all other biscuits?”

“No it’s not. As I say, analogies.” She glanced at Yaz, giving her an apologetic smile.

“But not helpful ones,” the younger woman reprimanded gently. 

“Basically,” the Doctor paused from her sonic examinations. “Through there is somewhere else.”

Yaz pursed her lips for a moment before replying. “I kind of got that just from looking. Where was it?”

The Doctor gave a half smile whilst tipping her head to the side. “It wasn’t just one place.” Yaz must have let the confusion she was feeling show on her face as the Doctor continued. “We could only see one place, but the sonic is showing multiple readings around the edge, as if there were many different locations overlaid on that gap.”

“Like different parts of the universe?”

The Doctor nodded sombrely. “And different universes.”

“I can tell from your expression that this isn’t a good thing,” Yaz wondered if anything they investigated was ever a good thing, concluding in this moment in the negative. 

“Very not good.” The Doctor agreed. “It can’t exist. If it is not closed properly, it could cause the entirety of this part of the universe to implode on itself.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound good at all,” Yaz agreed fervently. “So what do we do about it?”

“That’s the right question,” the Doctor responded unhelpfully, looking thoughtfully at the area around the rift, seeing as it had returned to stopping them from looking directly at it since they had stepped away.

“And the answer?” Yaz had enough experience to know this was not going to be simple. It never was.

“Not so sure of that bit, but I’m working on it. In the meantime, we need to get our Sontaran friend back through to where he should be.”

“We just shove him back through the hole?” Yaz said doubtfully.

“Unfortunately it’s not going to be that simple. Evidently it opens wider the closer you get to it, but when we were close, it was not showing Sontar.” The Doctor had resumed fiddling with the sonic.

“But maybe he was somewhere else when he came through?” It seemed like a reasonable suggestion, Yaz thought. 

“Possibly, but I think there are so many different realities and places…” the Doctor beckoned with her head and she and Yaz stepped closer once more, causing the gap to open up again. This time the Doctor aimed the sonic at it and activated it – and in front of their eyes the location visible through the hole began to blur and change into a different place, and again, and again. A succession of wildly different places faded in and out of view through the gap, until the sight of a bleak, sandy sea shore and a distant figure caused the Doctor to gasp and drop the sonic, the gap fizzling closed.

“What happened?” Yaz asked, but the Doctor had grabbed the sonic and was striding away. 

“Doctor?” Yaz called, half running to keep up with the other woman’s pace. She though the Doctor would be heading back to the derelict flats, but instead she seemed to be aimed at nowhere in particular, her fists clenched beside her.

“Doctor? You’re worrying me, what’s wrong?” Yaz pressed in concern, and finally the Doctor stopped, still facing away, her head bowed, hands still in fists.

“Doctor?” Yaz said again. “What did you see? Where was that?”

The Doctor turned slowly, her face a mask of grief. Yaz didn’t understand the words she spoke, but she could hear the break in her voice when she did so.

“Dårlig Ulv-Stranden.”

Yaz’s face was a mask of confusion.

“Bad Wolf Bay.”


End file.
